SPEAKER_01 0:00

It doesn't matter. Just keep doing the work. Keep doing the work. If there are story problems you have to solve, stop worrying about what anybody thinks of you or anything like that. Just go solve the story problem.

SPEAKER_02 0:11

Welcome to the Write It Scared podcast. I'm your host, Stacey Fraser, a formerly repressed creative soul, turned fiction writer, story editor, and author accelerator certified fiction book coach. At Write It Scared, we tell the truth about why writing a novel is so hard by acknowledging that most writers grapple with two stories. The one they want to put on the page to the best of their ability, and the often subconscious internal story that prevents them from doing it. This show is designed to help you identify and rewrite the internal narrative holding you back while you discover and write the story you want to tell and learn all the tools to help you do that successfully. Join me each week for a new episode where we'll talk about writing to deepen our understanding of the craft and of ourselves as writers. Writing a novel is an inside job that we do not do alone. Welcome to Write It's Scared. I'm glad you're here. Let's dive in. Hi, writer. Welcome back to the Write It Scared Podcast. I'm your host, Stacey. Today's a guest episode, and I'm very excited to introduce Susan Sloat, whose writing career spans decades in multiple genres and many, many books. We dig into the truth behind her writing life and the book that took her three days to write, and the one that took her 30 years. We also talk about the role that music plays in her storytelling and her latest book, Scenes from a Song, and how she navigates doubt and fear and all the messy realities of being a working writer. Susan was endlessly insightful as well as generous, and she has such a great perspective that I think will leave you feeling a whole lot steadier about your own creative path. So I'm so excited for you to hear this one because we laughed a lot. Let me give you Susan's bio and then we'll jump into our interview. Susan Sloat is the author and co-author of more than 25 books, including Forward to Camelot, a time travel thriller about the JFK assassination that became a number six Amazon bestseller and was optioned for film. Her Broadway-inspired novel, Stealing Fire, became a number two Amazon bestseller, and she co-created a new genre with her self-help novel, Realizing You. Her latest novel, Scenes from a Song, debuted as a number one new release in two Amazon categories within 18 hours and held that spot for several weeks. Susan also writes young adult fiction and nonfiction, including the award-winning Ray Charles Find Another Way and Mysteries Unwrapped, The Secrets of Alcatraz, which led to her appearance on the History Channel's Mystery Quest. She has been a sports writer and a screenwriter, edited the popular Kyle and Corey Young Adult book series, managed two political campaigns, and founded an authors festival to promote student literacy in her hometown outside Charleston, South Carolina. She has appeared in multiple volumes of Who's Who in America and Who's Who in Entertainment, as well as Who's Who Among American Women. Susan, thank you so much for coming onto the Write It Scared podcast. It is a delight to have you. I can't wait to hear all the amazing stuff that you're going to share with our listeners today. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 3:09

I am fantastic, Stacey, and I'm thrilled to be here. This is exciting. Anyone who has a podcast called Write It Scared has got to have a sense of humor. So I'm excited about that.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe gallows humor, but hey, it's fine. For writers, gallows is sometimes the highest form of humor, really. It's so true. That is so true.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

So we had a few minutes to chat before I hit record. But for our listeners, would you please share about yourself and your journey to becoming a writer, a prolific writer?

SPEAKER_01 3:42

Well, thank you very much for that. And thank you for calling me prolific. I tell people I had to do something with my time, but I actually have been writing since I was seven years old, since I realized that the stories that people were reading to me were stories I could write myself and I could do my own thing. So I started doing that at seven. I started getting paid for it in 1985, which is before most of everybody here was born. So this is back when dinosaurs ruled the earth for sure. I wanted to write books because of all the books that I had read as a child. Books that are written for seven, eight years old. That's pretty much my speed. That's it, and it makes me happy. I started writing these books when I discovered that there are actually companies in New York that will pay writers to write books on contract. And I started doing that in the late 80s. And over the years I wrote 17 of them. Okay. And then I started doing what I consider my serious work, which is writing longer, more complex novels, mostly in multiple genres, because why should I stay with one? Why should I be a mystery writer or a romance writer or a history writer when I could be all of those things? Why should I do that? And so that is what I pretty much did. And at this point, the latest book that I have published, which literally is in the last month, is my new novel, Scenes from a song. And it is my 26th published book. And so I think I brought you up to date. That's pretty much it.

SPEAKER_02 5:17

That is amazing. So you started in Hollywood in the screenwriting world and went into narrative fiction, which has been, which was a love for you from the time you were small. I just have to ask. So when you first started writing long form fiction, what did you find most challenging about it as compared to screenwriting?

SPEAKER_01 5:38

There's so much that's challenging about narrative fiction. There really is. And no shit. No. Not like I'm telling you anything you don't know, that's for sure. But what's interesting is that the project that I pretty much made the centerpiece of the first thing that I did was one of the most complex novels I've ever written in my life. In fact, it was so complex that I dragged in a friend of mine to be my co-author because there's no way I could finish it alone. And the novel is Forward to Camelot, which is a time travel thriller about the Kennedy assassination, which took literally years of research, which took practically took me. If they still have insane asylums, I was pretty close to it. Because a lot of this had to deal with it in the latter parts of the story, dealt with situations where there would be characters split up in different places. There was a schedule that was going on, there was time stuff that was happening. It all had to happen at a certain time, and it all had to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. And it was crazy. So that was the challenging thing was getting everything to fit together the way I envisioned it.

SPEAKER_02 6:45

And that was your first long form novel.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

That was my first major long form novel. I mean, I had done others before, I had published others before, but this was the one that kind of started the journey for me going off on my own with my own projects, my own series, my own whatever. And that is that is the one right now. I'm still highly proud of it, but it's also one of the books that I'm probably best known for is that novel.

SPEAKER_02 7:08

It has a beautiful, beautiful cover.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

I mean, it's definitely beautiful cover. Yeah. I just clicked on. So I'm thrilled with it. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

Yeah. So, you know, screenwriting to novel writing, I often get writers who come to me and say that they have an idea for a story. And they're like, but I'm not sure which avenue to pursue. Should I try to write this as a script? Andor should I write this as long form fiction? Do you have any advice as to what lends itself better to one avenue or the other?

SPEAKER_01 7:39

Well, I'm going to go back to my training with Robert McKee in screenwriting back in the 80s. Robert McKee is internationally known now, but at the time that I knew him, he was just starting to teach his story structure class, which by the way is the best story structure class on earth. Yeah, I love it. But the way I took it, it was once a week for eight weeks. And my God, it was wonderful. It was wonderful.

SPEAKER_02 8:02

And all so are all of his books.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

I mean his books are fantastic. But Bob McKee actually would say in his story structure class that you can sort of tell what a story is by a couple of factors. In a in a book that is, or in a novel, really, it's a lot of it is the character inside his own head. So you can actually hear what he's thinking and see what decisions he's making, and then kind of follow him. When you have a play, that is one character in conflict with one or more other characters. So you're seeing their conflict played out on the stage. In a movie, it tends the best ones tend to be uh characters against nature. Things like Jaws and stuff like that, where you can actually see huge storms and terrible creatures and all kinds of other stuff. That is what movies do very, very well. And so when you think about it, obviously it depends on the content of what the people ask you about, but that tends to be the tipping point for a lot of people in terms of the way they actually see what is a novel, what is a play, what is whatever. And and in my case, it's somewhat instinctive.

SPEAKER_02 9:15

Well, let's talk about your latest novel. Yes is Scenes from a Song. Scenes from a Song. Yeah, please share what that is about and what inspired you to write it.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

Well, what inspired me to write it was a YouTube clip of Paul McCartney, which you don't think of necessarily as inspiration, but it was my favorite Beatles song. I was going through Beatles phase in 2018, so that's what happened. My favorite Beatles song is a very early song, or very early hit of theirs called Please Please Me. Just love it, love it. Doesn't matter when I hear it, just love it. Well, I went hunting for it on the internet and I found a YouTube clip of Paul McCartney closing a concert of his with that song. New arrangement. Great, great players, really, really good. Loved it. Well, McCartney was actually filming a lot of the audience for that concert because he was doing a concert film that he was going to put together afterwards. So a lot of the stuff that you see are the reactions of the audience. Okay. So he's playing, they're singing, everything's great. People are singing in the audience, they know every single word. People are dancing, they're having a great time. And there were people toward the end of the song who were crying. I mean, crying. And I thought, wow, that's amazing. Why would an upbeat song make them cry? And I realized because it brings them back to a time in their lives that's important. At that time, I was doing nanoRimo every November, National Novel Writing Month, which is the insane marathon to write 50,000 words of an original novel in 30 days. Okay, which is enormous fun. It's incredibly stressful. You eat a lot of chocolate and you pray your way through it.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

And don't forget to stretch your hip flexors.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

Oh, yes. Thank you for that. Thank you. Yes. My chiropractor, thanks you. Anyway, is that I decided I wanted to do a story about a band and a song. And about a song that would move people so much that you would get that same kind of reaction, the tears and all that kind of thing. So I started writing it for Nano Rimo, and I actually did finish that November with 50,000 words. I finished the entire draft before the end of 2018, like six hours before the end of 2018, but 2018 nonetheless. And I pretty much put it away. I didn't know what to do with it. The interesting thing about it is that the story is about a 1960s band. It's about a young man named Jimmy who has just gone through a tragedy. His father, who's a firefighter on Long Island in New York, was killed in a house fire and his family's life has been totally upturned. So when you meet him, he's living in a horrible place in the Bronx where he this is the only thing his mother can afford because they had a problem with the father's life insurance. And she's had to go to work and his life has been upended. He's in a new school, he's with new people, he hates everything about it. He's miserable and he misses his dad horribly. And so the story begins with the first notes of a song floating into his head because he loves music and he and his dad would play music together and talk about it, and his dad would teach him stuff. And so he learned to play the guitar and he knows that he's got another song that's going to be finished pretty soon. And the song that he's writing now is pretty much about all the aspects of his life that he misses from living in Long Island, all the things that were wonderful about that. And so what happens is that he finishes this song and he introduces it to a guy that he meets who has his own band. Three guys. And eventually they invite him to join the band. And the band becomes one of the greatest successes in rock musical history. Okay. I mean, think the Beatles if you want to, because there certainly was an uh an element of that for sure. But the song itself becomes one of the most important parts of their repertoire and it becomes one of the most important hits they ever have. And when the time comes that the band ends up not being together anymore, that song just lives on and on and on. And people who love the song find it in life-changing moments, and it gives them comfort the way it gave Jimmy comfort. And so I tell people this is the first book I've ever written in my life that's actually where the hero is an inanimate object. It's the song. It's not anybody in the thing, it's the song. Because at every important moment in the story, in the narrative, the song shows up, which to me makes that's the hero. That's who it is. And so it's more than anything, it's the story of a very special song and a very special band. And yes, a lot of people that have read it have already told me they didn't want to, but yes, they cried. So I'm I'm happy about that. I hope people will enjoy it. It's when did you publish it? Published it. We did a soft launch of the ebook on Amazon in August, and that was about a month and a half ago. And in the first 18 hours it had launched, it went to number one new release in two different categories.

SPEAKER_02 14:36

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

It's it's thrilling. I'm I'm having a great, great time talking about it.

SPEAKER_02 14:41

I really sounds like you captured the feeling that you wanted to embody when you saw that clip of Paul McCarthy and the images of the audience crying when he was singing that song and the vibe that brought to each of them. That's pretty cool. So I would love to talk a little bit about your writing process because you have written and written and written and you have lots and lots of books, and they are across multiple genres, right? So nano rhymo kind of aside, because that is not we don't have that anymore. And it is true. It is kind of sad, right? Um it was great while it was here and then it had problems and I miss aspects of it. But anyway, so what is your process like when you have an idea and you decide to take that idea farther into a novel? What's it look like and how long does it take you?

SPEAKER_01 15:36

I'm gonna answer the last one first, if you don't mind. How long does it take you?

SPEAKER_02 15:40

You're gonna talk about the time you wrote a book in three days, aren't you? Don't do that.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

I'm just kidding.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

Did I mention the time that I wrote a book in 30 years? Should I mention that as well? Oh, yes, you should.

SPEAKER_00 15:51

You should tell me all about it.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

Yes, definitely. I did write a book in three days. I know you did, and I'm like a book in 30 years, and I will tell both stories, but for me, what the process, the beginning process where you get that first idea, that's some of the most fun you ever have in writing. And you know, and and I'm not the only one, I'm sure, who feels that way, right?

SPEAKER_02 16:11

It's like the romance stage, like the falling and the first stage, yes, yes, most wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

Oh, and I could do this. And wait a minute, maybe that and that goes with that, you know. It's interesting. I literally just downloaded a game on my phone, which allows you to like play a jigsaw puzzle. And when you've got a piece that snaps into place, it automatically just becomes part of the hole that you're doing and it never moves. And I'm realizing that with writing a book, it's a lot like that. You start with a piece and then you go, oh, wait a minute, this could also fit. Bang, and it fits together, and you just leave it alone, and then you go on to something else, and then and you keep going until you hit that first moment where it's like, I don't know where this fits. Oh, I don't know where this fits. And you just kind of sit with it, you know. I I will tell you that I probably have some of the worst procrastination habits any writer's ever had ever, which explains why I had to write a book in three days. So let me talk about that for a bit, and then I would get to the 30 years because I promise you there is a story involved with that as well. Back in the days when I was writing under contract, the thing I was most worried about was the phrase breach of contract. Because when someone said you're going to turn in the book on this date, I would agree to it and then I would sign the contract, right? And then I didn't even want to think about what would happen if I didn't turn it in. You know, so I was writing a series of three books for a girls' book series based on a board game called Girl Talk. And I had written like for th two previous books using this character, Samantha, as the main character. And I was dealing pretty well with her issues. She was a she's a preteen, she's sort of very drama-oriented, she reads her astrological uh prediction every day. She's she's sort of very drama queen kind of thing. And I knew being that kind of person myself, I was like, okay, I can deal with this. I know how to write this. And then for the third book in the series that they wanted me to write, they gave me a weird assignment. They said, she's going to be raising a calf for the 4-H fair. And we want you to write a book about that. And I had no idea how to do that. I mean, just none. And I knew what the 4-H fair was, and I knew that it dealt with a lot of agricultural stuff, and then it dealt with clubs around the country for kids who were raised in environments that were agricultural. I understood that. But, you know, as far as actually understanding what goes on on a farm with raising animals and dealing with them, that was something I didn't know how to do. No idea. I mean, I was a suburban girl, been raised in the suburbs. The closest I ever got to a pet was, you know, a goldfish, a dog, something like that. That's pretty much it. That's it. And so that whole process was difficult for me. And then not just the idea of raising an animal, but training them for a fair, training them to do things, that was too much. So I said to myself, this is the 90s. I said, I'm gonna go to the library and I'm gonna get a librarian to help me find out how to do this, right? And then I'll write it and it'll be fine. And I kept putting it off and putting it off and putting it off. And I finally got to the point where it was the final weekend before I was supposed to turn this in. And back in those days, I was because I was living outside of New York City and my editor was in New York, my agreement with her had been to personally deliver the manuscript to her, you know, take a train into the city, deliver the manuscript to her, and then we could chat for a little bit, and then I would, you know, leave. So I'm expected to deliver this manuscript at like 11 o'clock in the morning on Monday morning, and it's Friday. And I haven't written a word, and I panicked, and I don't know what to do. And I finally said, Okay, you haven't got time to go to the library. You're gonna just make it up because you don't have any idea how this works, and you have to turn in something, or there's gonna be breach of contract, and that's scary. So you're gonna do that. So what I did was I decided that Samantha, being you know, a theatrical kind of a girl, also does not know how to to train a f an animal for the 4-H fair, which was the first really important thing I learned. And I realized, okay, if she doesn't know how to do it, then she's gonna make it up too because she doesn't know what to do and she's got a deadline. So it's like, I'm feeling kind of akin to Samantha right now. I'm feeling very good about this because we have the same problem, don't we? So she decides she's gonna teach this calf how to do the things they that the calf has to do in the 4-H competition by singing songs to him. And so each song would represent a certain thing that the calf had to do. So if the calf had to walk or do whatever, she would sing in a Beatles song. And if the calf had to do this, that, or the other thing, she would sing in a Petula Clark song, right? And so she's going around teaching this calf, singing away, and the calf is doing exactly what she wants and ends up placing in the competition, and it all turns out wonderfully. I finished the manuscript without even having time to proof it, spell it, nothing. I finished the manuscript and printed it out. Remember the days of the printers, guys? That was such a long time ago. I printed it out and had it ready to go half an hour before I got on the train to go to New York on Monday morning. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:32

Skin of the teeth.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Yep. Now, here's what's really funny about the whole thing. I turned it in, no problem, everything was great. And a couple weeks later, I get a call from the editor. And by the way, I did not tell the editor what had happened, okay? I just there was no point in the editor knowing that I was so panicked because all writers are panicked and we're all crazy anyway, right? William Goldman's totally right that all writers are crazy, even the normal ones are weird. So we're just gonna leave that alone. Anyway, I get a call. Call from her about two weeks later. Is that something you haven't heard before?

SPEAKER_02 22:03

No, but it tickled me. That's true.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

All fighters are crazy, even the normal ones are weird. It's from William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade, and I've never forgotten it. Anyway, two weeks later, I get a call from the editor, and she says, I just want you to know something. We really, really enjoyed the other two books that you wrote. But at the highest levels of Western Publishing, which is the publishing house for this book, they adored this book. They thought this was wonderful and funny and great. We're thrilled with what you did, and thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 22:33

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 22:34

I never told her. I mean, I don't know what the point would have been. You know, it's like I was it all worked out, and that was fine, and no point.

SPEAKER_02 22:43

I'm just hearing this thread through all of the work that you have shared is that there is this level of right what you know, and all the different shades that are in that. I mean, it's you you pull in the music and you pull in your own experience, your own emotional intelligence, right? So you have you're a person with feelings like right on the edge of your sleeve. You cry at everything. I am very, very similar. But you use your strengths to your advantage, and you happen, and you happen to really, what's the right way to phrase it? Well, you met a situation where you were uncertained, and then that led to kind of a ticking time bomb situation, which forced you to lean on those strengths in a really smart way. And that led to a great outcome for you and your book. That's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

I can't tell you how much I appreciate your saying that because someone said something to me yesterday that was very interesting that had never occurred to me. And that was that there's sort of like two dual sides to me. One side is the writing, one side is the music. I did not understand until he said this yesterday that that was so much a part of everything I did, and that I it was always part of everything. And so, and that actually leads to the next story, the 30 years, right? Okay. Back in the early 1980s, again, back before you were all born kids, back in the days of the dinosaurs, I fell in love with a guy who was much older than me. And it was a relationship I didn't really understand. So much I didn't understand that was going on at the time, but I was deeply in love. It was a very big deal. And I did what I always did when I didn't understand a situation, I started writing about it. Okay. And so I started writing and I didn't even know what I was writing. I didn't know if I was writing a story, I didn't know if I was writing a novel. And of course, at that time I had not completed a novel. So writing a novel was just the scariest thing of all. But I just sat down at the typewriter, yes, at the typewriter, guys, my little IBM Selectric. Don't anybody laugh about that. And I started writing one night. I was, you know, 26 at this point. And I would write, I did something then that I'm actually very sort of proud of because it's something I can do now that's very helpful. And that is you write where you feel you can write. Oh, I think I know what I'm doing in this scene, so I'm gonna write this scene. And then, you know, you do something that's maybe a year later, and you write something in that scene because you know what is coming up there. Now, I actually did this. And what's funny is some years later, I had a very, very close friend, a writer also, one of the most brilliant writers I've ever known. And she was a natural writer, one of those people who had never had a class, never had much education, but she wrote stories that were so marvelous. She was a published author, she'd won the Edgar Award for Best Children's Mystery of the Year. She was brilliant, okay? And I loved her. And I showed her the pages of this thing that I didn't even know what it was. And she said to me, I love this. I absolutely love this, and you've got to finish this. You've got to. It's great. Anyway, I put it aside, I picked it up, I did a little more, I picked it up, I put it aside, kept, you know, my my friend in the back of her mind, constantly bugging me about it, bugging me about it. You gotta finish it, you gotta finish it. And then I changed computers. I'd gone from typewriter, hello, to computer. I had typed in all the pages that I actually had, and then so I had a record of all of that stuff. And then in around 2000, I can't remember what, 2002 or something, I changed computers and we were taking stuff off the old computer. And I discovered that I had 275 pages of manuscript and I didn't know what to do with it. But I thought, you know what, this is too much to let go of. So 2013 comes along. I had a friend who was running a small press in North Carolina, and she wanted to publish this book, and so she published it. It became a hot new release on Amazon for 90 full days. It was a number two Amazon bestseller and won some awards. And the interesting thing about it is that from the time I started writing it to the time it was published was a full 30 years. Wow. Seems like a really long time now, but I'll tell you, when people ask me about it, I'm like, look, I don't have another 30 years to give a book. So it's like it better get finished pretty soon.

SPEAKER_02 27:26

So 26 plus 30 years.

SPEAKER_01 27:30

Plus 36. So yeah, yeah. Wow. And and time has gone by since then, too. So think about that. But yes, 30 years is a long time. And the nice thing about all of it is that at the very, very end of the process, before I just before I finished the book, I happened to read something that was written by the guy I'd fallen in love with. It's because he was an author too, by the way. Very, very good one. He'd been a best-selling author. And toward the end of his life, he was doing a lot of self-publishing, and he wrote something that I read, which gave me an incredible indication of what kind of a life he had led and what kind of demons he was carrying around with him that I did not understand at that time when I was with him, that I did not understand even when I broke up with him, but that explained everything in the world about why we were together and what had actually happened and all this other kind of thing. It was really a revelation. It really was. And I it I needed to see that piece before I could write the rest of the story explaining who he was. Because, you know, I was writing from his point of view and from my point of view at the same time. The title of the novel is Stealing Fire.

SPEAKER_02 28:39

Amazing. So three days for one and 30 years. Three years for another. I know. So the answer is, you know, one of my father's favorite things is nothing's for sure, and it all depends. And the only thing consistent is change, right? So I think it just all depends. But I can't imagine having a story with me for 30 years and, you know, nurturing it along the way for it to come to fruition whenever when the time was right. And sometimes I think it's just a good lesson for me to think about. You know, I tend to think the timing, I have all the timing in my hand, you know, that I can control so many things. And this is the reality is that I cannot. And, you know, I'm working on my own story right now. And I'm like a, you know, I have, I'm very linear. I'm like track, track, track, track, track, gonna get, gonna get to wherever it's gonna go to the end. But there is something to be said for allowance, even if it's subconscious, right? There is something to be said for allowance. And I think that's part of the beauty of story, the magic of what it is that writers do is that they take an experience that they've been holding in their heart and they place it on the page and give it shape and meaning. And then other people get to experience it too, just like the beauty of the scenes from a song, right? Just like the full circle beauty of the musical that you get to be involved in. So I think I think it's really cool and it's really relevant and a great lesson. Okay. What I definitely wanted to ask you about is in our email exchange, you had mentioned that a writer's emotional state can really help or hinder their writing process. And could you share what you meant by that and maybe give an example of how your emotions have either helped or hindered during during the process and what the result was?

SPEAKER_01 30:35

Well, let's go back to the three-day novel. Such a good example. Yeah, my emotional state was paralyzed. I couldn't move. And I remember a writer friend of mine years and years ago who said to me something I never forgot. She said, whenever I get a new writing assignment, I do what every writer does. I go to my desk, I sit down, and I panic. I thought, okay, this is obviously part of the process. It's not not really an issue. The interesting thing for me is that I think the best emotional state for me to start a new work in is sort of a neutral one. Because when you get those first ideas, you never really know where they're coming from or when they're going to come. And so when they come, you tend to be in sort of a neutral state anyway. You know, I mean, it you don't tend to get fabulous ideas when you're in a state of paralyzing panic. And you don't get wonderful ideas when you're in a state of just exhaustion or when you're in pain or when you're in some sort of a terrible emotional place. You tend to get those ideas when you just allow your mind to sit quiet, you know. And so the point is that the more neutral I can be about how I'm feeling, the easier it is for me to actually sit down at my desk and write. You know, I mean, self-flagellation doesn't work. I have tried everything. I've tried bribing myself, I've tried lying to myself, I've tried threatening myself. I don't respond very well to any of that stuff. And and I don't believe the person holding the whip either because I know her pretty well. It's not gonna get so that being the case, you know, you really have to find ways to to give yourself that space to write.

SPEAKER_02 32:19

So you've written so much, you've been incredibly, you know, successful. Do you ever have doubts? Do you ever struggle with imposter syndrome? Do you ever do you ever sit there and go, oh my God, what did I just write?

SPEAKER_01 32:32

I have those moments where I say to myself, you know, maybe writing isn't the career path for me, seriously. I've I've written some books, that's true, but maybe honestly, I'd be better off being a welder. Maybe I should do that. I should think about that. You know, I mean, I could I could go to school, I could learn welding at night, and everything would be great. And I certainly struggled with that before. I will tell you that one thing that helped a lot, and this is probably a lot of your audience is gonna hate me for saying this, but I'm trying to be candid here. What helped me a lot was when I finished and published Forward to Camelot because that was an enormous project that was very difficult to do. And when I realized that we actually had finished it successfully, that we had said what we wanted to say in the book, that was just an enormous confidence booster. Realizing I'd finished this very long piece of work that required so much diligence and so much fitting and changing and all the things that you do in a project like that, that was just huge in terms of my being able to do it. But every new project you have your doubts about. You're always worried, am I saying what I want to say? Is it turning out well? Are the characters making any sense? Does any of this matter? Does anybody care? Is anybody ever gonna read this after I die? You know, and I've sort of reconciled myself to the idea that if nobody reads it after I die, it sort of doesn't matter because at least for me, I did it. I did it and I know I did it, and I would love for it to live after I die, and that would be great. But the point is, is I still did it, and I feel good about having done that. So, you know, as far as feeling like an imposter, I've felt that way for most of my life, to be honest with you. And I I I don't know whether you've had the experience of meeting someone who has achieved so much that it's impossible to believe that they could have imposter syndrome. But you know, if you ever met someone who is, you know, legitimately famous in the sense of like, you know, a Brad Pitt or somebody like that, and if they say to you, you know, I can't believe that anyone's paying me to do this, and I can't believe that I think I can do this, you'd have that moment of being rocked back and going, wait a minute, wait a minute. You've done this many movies, you've done this, you've done that, you've done this, and you still think you can't do it. You know, there's just there's there's a weird disconnect there with all of that. And so I I have not run to a therapist to find out why I feel the way I feel, but but I just I keep telling myself, you know, at some point it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Just keep doing the work, keep doing the work. If there are story problems you have to solve, stop worrying about what anybody thinks of you or anything like that. Just go solve the story problem.

SPEAKER_02 35:22

I wish I had a microphone. I would drop it for you right now. I do, actually, but I better not because it will be really bad for our audio. That was beautiful. That was one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard. And you know, I just think that God, I think you're right. It's like, I don't think that stuff ever goes away. Doesn't matter who you are. I mean, if you didn't have an aspect of it, just it it let's take our Brad Pitt. If Brad Pitt didn't have an aspect of of worrying of whether or not they could pull this off, I think that that would be dehumanizing, make them a bit of a narcissist, maybe. Or, you know, some maybe the way to look at it is like if we have that component of doubt, whatever it looks like, that's the way it's supposed to be. But the key is to dig into what makes you move past it and lean into that. And it sounds like you've done that for yourself. And, you know, you coming in on and sharing that story here is gonna inspire a lot of other people to do the same. So I thank you. I think that's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 36:28

Well, thank you. I'm if it inspires anyone, if anything I say inspires anyone, then I'm thrilled. I really, really am. You know, you get to a point where it matters what you can pour into someone else and and whether you can help them and whether you can show them some of the stuff you know so that it stops them from making the mistakes that you made. You know, I feel like saying to people, don't make my mistakes, make new mistakes. Please don't make new mistakes. Because I've already done the old mistake stuff. So I don't think you really need any help in that direction, really.

SPEAKER_02 36:59

All right. Well, before we wrap up, what's the best piece of writing advice or creative advice that you've ever received?

SPEAKER_01 37:06

Maybe the best piece of life advice I ever got, and it probably applies to writing as well, because there's always an element of fear whenever you sit down and you face something you don't know how to do. So the best advice I ever got in my life from anyone was someone who said to me many years ago, there's nothing to be afraid of. And he is so completely right, not just in life, but in writing, there's nothing to be afraid of. There is a solution. If you came up with a problem, there's a solution. Also, by the way, Bobby Key said something that stuck with me that I think is amazing. He said in the course of his, I believe in the course of the workshop I took with him for two years, he said, When you have the first idea for a story, be aware that it's already finished in your head. And your only job is just to dig it out. Oh, that's which I think is brilliant. It's suddenly something about the idea that it's already done, and you don't have to worry about it because you've already just gotten the idea for it, but you're gonna get it. Stephen King said exactly the same thing in his book on writing. It's just a matter of mining what you actually have in there. Just get your pickaxe and dig it right out. It's pretty well.

SPEAKER_02 38:14

I love that.

SPEAKER_01 38:15

That's that was enormously helpful to me, definitely.

SPEAKER_02 38:18

Yeah, I can see that. Yeah, yeah. And I love what you said about fear. I I I've always liked that. Have you ever heard the acronym? It's fear stands for false expectations appearing real.

SPEAKER_01 38:30

Right.

SPEAKER_02 38:30

So it's the thing you're afraid of, is the expectation, the thing you think is gonna happen, but you don't have a crystal ball, right?

SPEAKER_01 38:37

So and this is this is absolutely true. The other thing also is for me is that is that uh at this point I can now say to myself, if I don't know how to do this, I figured out how to do other things before. I figured out how to save a president. So as far as I'm concerned, I can do this.

SPEAKER_02 38:51

You can do anything. You can do anything. All right. And last question, and then please share where listeners can find you. But last question is what is the wish that you would like to impart to your fellow writers out there? What would you like them to hold on to, believe in, and hope for themselves?

SPEAKER_01 39:11

I think the last thing that I've said that the story's already finished in your head when you have it, that you know, that there's nothing to be afraid of and getting a pickaxe is just starting to chisel away at what you think you can do, and that not to worry about going down the false lane because you can find the right lane eventually, and you almost certainly will. You know, just stay with it. It can feel so hard, it can feel so hopeless, but it's not. And there's nothing about the writing process that you cannot learn and that I hope people will learn, you know, the spelling, the grammar, all those silly things that Stephen King says it's really important to have in your toolbox, but you should have them. Are all of us going to be Stephen King? Probably not. But if there's a story in your head that will not go away, it's a story that's worth telling. Don't let it die in darkness. Just pick up that pickaxe and start chiseling away.

SPEAKER_02 40:04

Thank you so much, Susan. You're such a delight. Where can listeners find you and your books?

SPEAKER_01 40:11

The best place to find me is at my website, which is www.susansloat.com, which is s-a-n-s-l-o-a-t-e.com, which I think you're probably going to link in the absolutely description. Okay. And then my books are available on Amazon. If you go to Amazon and just type in my name, Susan Sloat, you will find all of my books there, and that's helpful. You'll also be able to be taken to my author central page, which will list everything that's there. I'm on Goodreads, I'm on Amazon, I'm on X, I'm on Facebook, I'm a little bit on Instagram, but again, all on the same thing under Susan Sloat. It's I'm not hard to find, basically.

SPEAKER_02 40:54

Awesome. I will make sure to put all of those links into the show notes. Thank you again for your time today for coming on and sharing your experience and your wisdom and your hope for the rest of us. It was a delight.

SPEAKER_01 41:06

I've had the greatest time. It's been a pleasure. Love it. Would love to come back. Thank you so much, Stacy.

SPEAKER_02 41:13

Thank you for listening to the Write It Scared podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please make sure to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode. And please leave a review. Reviews help other writers like you find the voices and messages they need to hear to continue to write their stories. Let's lift each other up. Remember, you can be scared and still be unstoppable. I'll see you next week.